Views of Antarctica
- Unusual Pictures of Antarctica

It is
sometimes difficult
to envisage a whole continent and its place in the world. You
can look at a map and see the shape of it and where places are
in relation to other places and you can look at aerial photographs,
but it requires quite a lot of imagination and not a small amount
of experience to get an idea of the larger picture.

Here are a few
composite and artist-impression pictures that have been borrowed
from various sources that give a good impression of Antarctica
in three dimensions and also in relation to how it fits into
the globe.

Use of picture courtesy
of NASA

Composite image of
Antarctica and southern hemisphere at night showing
lights from major cities on South America (top left),
Africa (top right) and Australia / New Zealand (bottom
right). The earth could never be viewed in this way
as in reality one half of this view would be in daylight
and the other in darkness

The outline of Antarctica
is frequently different in different images as some
represent the continent during the summer, some during
the winter and some in between. At its greatest extent
the winter sea-ice just about doubles the size of Antarctica.

Even in the summer the
shape of the coast-line varies as very little of it
consists of rock leading down to the sea. Much of the
edge of Antarctica is an ice-edge of constantly flowing
and ebbing glaciers, ice shelves and sea-ice that sometimes
may break out each year, sometimes not for a few years.
A bit of a map-makers night-mare in fact. No sooner
is a map made, than it's out of date.

For more unusual views of Antarctica
(and the rest of the world too) take a look at the excellent
Earth viewer,
this allows you to choose your position above the earth
according to longitude and latitude and even the day
and time of year to follow where the sun goes with the
seasons.

Antarctica under the icesheets -
video from NASA

This image is in the public domain

Antarctica as it would
be if the covering of ice was removed, much
of the continental "land" area is actually
currently depressed below sea level due to the weight
of the ice above it.
The above image does not take into consideration that
sea-level would rise due to the melted ice or that the
land would slowly rise again over the period of a few
tens of thousands of years.

It is estimated that
the land is pushed down about 1,625ft (500m) by the
ice. These maps shows the underlying land with the ice
sheet peeled away. The average depth of the ice sheet
is more than 6,600ft (more than 2,000m).

A 3-D computer
generated image taken from hundreds of data points.
I particularly like this as it gives a feeling for the
height of Antarctica. The average height of the continent
is 8,000ft (over 2,400m) as against the next highest
which is Asia at an average of 3,000ft (just over 900m).

The high dome of East
Antarctica is clearly seen as is the elevation of the
South Pole and the formidable barrier presented by the
Trans-Antarctic Mountains which usually just appear
as a diffuse line running across maps.

Use of pictures courtesy NASA

These
two pictures show the average sea-ice accumulation around
Antarctica at the minimum in February (left) and the
maximum in October (right). These were taken with a
satellite equipped with the ability to distinguish between
ice at sea and ice on the land (freshwater or sea-water
ice).